Entry for the Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Choosen character: Marcus Flint
Task #2: Write about someone who hasn't prepared enough, or hasn't prepared at all.
Extra Prompts:
(emotion) fear
(word) Schedule
Entry for the Chocolate Frog Card Club
(Gold) Erumpent; Challenge: Write about someone with a thick emotional skin.
Entry for the Bad Movie Tuesday Challenge/Competition
Glen or Glenda: (dialogue) "You're a very busy man."
Entry for the Gringotts Prompt Bank
AU Prompts
Assassin!AU
Autumn/Fall Vocabulary
(object) Acorn
(object) Apple
(object) Chestnut
(object) Cobweb
(feeling) Cold
(object) Corn
(object) Cranberry
(word) Crisp
(words) Falling Leaves
(occasion) Halloween
(word) Harvest
(word) Hay
(object) Leaves
(object) Nuts
(month) October
(object) Pine Cone
(object) Pumpkin
(object) Raincoat
(object) Rake
(word) Reap
(object) Scarecrow
(word) Season
(word) Sleet
Various Prompts: Navy CIS
(occupation) FBI agent
(setting) Washington D.C.
(setting) an airport
(setting) a cellar
(object) a badge from a law enforcement organisation
(object) a jacket with the abbreviation of a law enforcement organisation
(object) a 9 millimeter
(object) a weapon's holster
(object) white blouse
(object) chewing gum
(object) a coffee to go
(action) loading a gun
(action) shooting someone
(dialogue) "Like some species of frog, I grow what I need."
(dialogue) "You're still a bastard."
(dialogue) "Never say you're sorry."
Various Prompts: Sherlock
(action) shooting someone
(object) coffee
(object) gun
Various Prompts: Sons of Anarchy
(object) Sunglasses
(action) Pull a gun
(dialogue) "For how long? A day? A week?"
(scenario) Have someone punch someone else
(clothing) Blue jeans
(clothing) Black jeans
(clothing) Long sleeve gray shirt
(word) Badge
(dialogue) "Now we made a deal."
Various Prompts: Jane Eyre
(hair colour) Dark or mousy haired
(action) Being hit on the head, drawing blood
(event) Accepting a new job
(place) A beautifully decorated dining room
(season) Fall
(smell) Crisp pine needles
(place) A dimly lit living room
All Colour Prompts
Auburn
Chestnut
Prepositions
Across
After
Descriptors
Run: Sprinted
Walked: Marched
(4500 Words)
Thank you to my fellow Wanderer Dina, who beta-ed this monster for me ;)
The Dangers Of Underestimation
"Nobody's ever been arrested for a murder; they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly."
Terry Hayes
It all started with a single call.
Marcus Flint was sitting in a shabby motel room, one of the cheapest he could find, finishing off a little bottle of scotch from the minibar. He was staring out of the window, his eyes following the falling leaves as they drifted past. Autumn was finally there, the season in which it got darker earlier – Mother Nature was giving him perfect circumstances to work. He just rose to grab another bottle when his cell phone rang, the sound a little bit too loud in the silent room. Moving over to the nightstand, he picked the cell phone up and answered it, already knowing that it was someone who was willing to pay his price.
"Yes?" he grunted shortly, grabbing his grey, long-sleeved shirt out of his duffelbag; he never unpacked it, as he knew that he would never stay somewhere for long.
"Mister Flint. I have a target for you. I offer you ten thousand; five now, and five after you fulfilled your task," a deep, busy voice said; he didn't recognise it, but that wasn't unusual – he'd had many employers in the past years, and most of them didn't use the same man for this service twice.
"The five W's?" Marcus asked curtly, grabbing a pen and a freshly bought notebook to scribble down the information he would get.
"The target is Katherine Bell. Special Agent at the FBI, currently at the bureau in Washington D.C. She is one of the desk hogs in the Department for Organised Crime. Too bad for her that she knows too much; take her out. She should be an easy target."
"Any more details?"
Marcus didn't feel comfortable about the little information; as a former US Marine, he was used to short instructions, and he had learned not to ask questions, but hearing that his target was an FBI agent, he felt like a few more facts could be useful.
"The 'why' isn't important to you. Travel to Washington, a file with all necessary information will be waiting for you in a locker at the airport, the key will be deposited at the rental car desk. Say your name's Black."
It sounded a little bit more promising, but Marcus found that the offered amount of money was too low for a job that involved the employee of a law enforcement organisation. They were considered a high-risk target by his kind, as many of them were highly trained, maybe even former soldiers like himself. There'd been countless incidents where someone had tried to fulfill an assignment like the one he was just receiving, and had ended up in jail, or in a coffin themselves.
"Your perception of the target's difficulty isn't mine. I don't know how hard this will be, but the price definitely is too low. I...
"You're a very busy man, I know," the voice interrupted him, and Marcus raised an eyebrow. It sounded as if the man had done this before countless times, knowing exactly what people like him would say. "I offer you thirty thousand. Will this be enough?"
"Now we made a deal," Marcus replied, grinning to himself while grabbing his laptop. "The task will be fulfilled. You've been informed where to send the money?"
"Yes. I'll keep an eye on the Washington Post."
With that, the line went dead, and Marcus threw his cell phone onto the bed, running a hand through his dark hair. Opening the laptop and switching it on, he made a list in his head which things he would have to do before he could leave for Washington. Luckily, there weren't any trails at his current location he had to conceal; he'd just finished a job in New York and this little cow village in Rhode Island had been the place to get rid of any evidence.
After booking a flight, he sent a short email to one of his contacts in Washington, informing him that he would require a 9 millimeter. He completed everything with his usual professional calmness – he'd been doing this for years now, and some things had become routine. Marcus found that his hesitation to pull the trigger had become lower over the years, and it didn't touch him anymore to see the dead. It had become normal, killing was what he earned his money with.
And this was going to be just another job.
OoO
It was surprisingly sunny for October as Marcus' plane landed in Washington. After grabbing the key for the locker and renting a car, he took the file from the locker and bought himself a coffee to go. Finding a nice spot in front of the terminal, away from the buzz of the arriving travellers, he drank a bit of his coffee before opening the file. It was a copy of an FBI personnel file, and even though it wasn't his business, he asked himself how his employer had gotten hold of it. Was there a leak in the FBI itself? After all, personnel files were classified.
A photo was attached to the first page of only two; a beautiful young woman with auburn hair and chestnut brown eyes was looking at the camera in a serious manner. The logo in the background indicated that it had been taken for the official file. For a moment, Marcus stared at the photo, taking in every detail of her face to make sure that he would recognise her when he saw her on the street.
Questions were running through his mind, including how a beautiful woman like her had landed in the FBI, but then he wiped it away, telling himself that it wasn't important.
The only important thing was that he would fulfill his job.
Shoving his sunglasses up his nose, he started to read through the facts about Katherine Bell.
She was only about four years younger than him, had studied French, Italian and Politics at Princeton University and entered the FBI Academy after two years of working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And now, she was working for the department that handled organised crime; she'd only transferred to the field bureau in Washington six months ago. Obviously, she'd angered someone important from the underworld, otherwise Marcus wouldn't be holding her file in his hands.
Whoever had deposited the file for Marcus, he'd added a photo of a house to the second and last page. A map extract showed its location, and Marcus smiled to himself – Agent Bell was living on a farm outside Washington, in an area where the neighbours were so far away that they wouldn't even hear the shot.
That would certainly make the task a little bit easier in his opinion. And even though a lot of information was still missing, he felt like his employer had been right – this woman was a lightweight, she wasn't on field duty, so she probably didn't even carry a weapon. An easy target for him to take down.
OoO
The following day, he positioned himself in a coffee shop across the street of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, acting as if he was reading the newspaper while watching the FBI building with interest. He'd decided that at least some preparation would be necessary, such as seeing if his target really didn't carry a weapon.
It didn't take long until he spotted Special Agent Bell on the pavement. She was wearing black jeans and a white blouse that was tugged into her pants. Her FBI badge was gleaming golden at her belt, not concealed by her FBI jacket as she sprinted over the street, trying to get out of the sleet that had just started. Marcus found that she looked a little bit out of place in these official clothes; she was so slim that the jacket was fitting as good as a potato sack. Even though she was wearing heeled boots, she looked small, and he was sure that he would've been at least one head taller if he'd stood right next to her.
Popping a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, he observed how she entered the coffee shop and marched past his table to order a coffee. Only a few minutes later, she left again, oblivious that she was being watched by the man in blue jeans and a raincoat.
Marcus couldn't deny that she was a very beautiful woman; her hair looked silky and her smile was dazzling, but he couldn't pay much attention to it. Feelings only made everything more complicated, and so he'd made it his rule number one to never fall in love with a target.
OoO
Over the next few days, Marcus followed her around the city to get an impression of her schedule; most of the time she was at the FBI building, and she only left it for lunch or to go home. She seemed like the typical workaholic to him.
With every hour of observation, he felt more and more sure that she would be easy to take down. At first, he'd still been sceptical, and had considered to ask one of his contacts in the city to try and get more information about Special Agent Bell: how good her close combat skills were, if she was currently wearing a gun and if she did, how good her marksmanship was.
However, he'd soon become sure that she wasn't armed at any time, something unusual for FBI agents, but he knew that she didn't have to carry a weapon thanks to her desk job.
Also, his assumptions about her house were correct as well. Marcus had spent a night looking around the big, old farm to find the best way to sneak up to the house and where to hide his car for a quick getaway.
A wide field and a row of high trees separated her property from the of her neighbours, and a big number of scarecrows with rakes stood on the field, making it possible to mistake a human being for the shadow of a figurine in the moonlight. She didn't seem to notice that someone was sneaking around on her farm in the middle of the night, and so he could inspect everything in a relaxed manner.
In the old barn, freshly harvested hay shared the space with acorns, chestnuts and pine cones, obviously reaped to be used for decoration. He even managed to get into her cellar; there, he found a lot of apples, cranberries, corn and nuts, together with an old secret recipe for apple cider. Marcus didn't even notice how he unconsciously started to rummage through some paper boxes with old photos and dancing trophies. It normally wasn't like him to be curious about a target's personal life, but Katherine Bell seemed to make his professionalism slip from time to time. She was interesting in her own way; he'd seen a lot of her quirks in the past few days, her laugh, had heard her joking around. However, the most lovely thing about her still was her smile.
And somewhere deep inside of him, he could feel regret about having to kill her.
But that was his job.
OoO
Ironically, it was Halloween as Marcus decided after a mere six days that he was ready to finish the job. It was a cold night as he sneaked across the fields towards Agent Bell's house, the smell of crisp pine needles hanging in the clear air. The sky was pitch black, not a single scar was shining through the blanket of clouds, but he didn't mind. For him, it was only good, as without moon and stars, he wouldn't have a shadow that Bell could have spotted if she happened to take a look out of the window.
She was in her dining room; he could see her moving around inside through the window as he walked closer to the house, having no spare glance for the pumpkin lanterns and the false cobwebs that were her Halloween decorations.
His 9 millimeter was resting in its holster on his right hip, and as he crouched next to the entrance door, he pulled it out. In a swift move, he loaded it with a full magazine and made sure that the safety was released before he stood up.
The front door wasn't locked, and as soundless as a ghost he entered the house, his eyes scanning the floorboards before stepping onto them. He could hear her moving around in one of the rooms and pressed himself against the wall, fingers closed around the handle of his weapon. From this position, he could look into the dining room; she was standing with her back to him, staring at one of the framed photos that was hanging on the walls of the beautifully decorated room.
There was no sign that she could hear him coming closer; his heart was thumping hard in his chest as he approached slowly, carefully, his breath held. He was raising his weapon, aiming, but upon his next step, the floorboard under his right foot creaked loudly.
Marcus' heart seemed to stop beating for a full second, and he was shocked. However, what surprised him more was that Agent Bell turned around sharply, kicking his gun out of his hand with a precise movement of her leg. Immediately, Marcus' instincts and reflexes kicked in, wiping away the brief feeling of fear and panic that had shot through his veins.
He scooted forwards, grabbing the fist that was aiming for his chin and the two of them crashed onto the wooden dining table, driven by Marcus' weight. The woman under him released an angry groan as her back hit the wood and brought her other elbow up against his throat. Somehow, they rolled over and fell off the table, both releasing a yell of pain as they hit the floor, pulling the tablecloth and a candlestick with them.
Marcus couldn't believe that a woman like her was able to hold him off; whenever he thought that he'd managed to get a grip on her, she slipped away by kicking him. With a hard kick into his private parts, she managed to bring him to his knees and jumped, running for the second door of the room, which was standing slightly ajar. Even though his eyes were burning with tears, Marcus ran after her, just in time to prevent her from getting a controlled grip on a huge knife. In the middle of the kitchen, they continued their fight, Agent Bell managing to cut him a few times before he was able to land a punch on her. She stumbled backwards, crashing through a door into the dimly lit living room like a puppet.
Blood was running down the side of her face and into her hair, but she still wasn't knocked out. She was crawling over the floor on all fours, and Marcus dove after her as he spotted an FBI badge and Glock on the coffee table.
Knowing that it would be his end if she got hold of her gun, he threw himself onto her back, pushing the air out of her lungs. Her elbow hit his nose, and immediately, warm blood ran down his face. For a second, he was disoriented, and so she managed to land some more punches before he grabbed her wrists, trying to get her under control. But she writhed too much, and his hands were slippery from sweat and blood, so he was unable to hold her long enough.
She glared up at him, teeth gritted together, her brown eyes twinkling furiously as she slung her legs around his waist and squeezed, hard enough to make him gasp in pain. An angry grin flashed over her face and they rolled over; now it was her trying to end the fight in her favour, but Marcus recovered from the shock and she landed onto her back again.
He pressed his whole weight against her, and not even a piece of paper would fit between their bodies. Their chests were heaving, both were panting hard, and they were injured, but it still wasn't over.
Katie landed another blow, and this time, Marcus' vision blurred slightly; she took the opportunity and freed herself. Marcus wanted to grab her ankle as she was diving for the coffee table, but he wasn't fast enough.
Before he could even push himself to his feet, a shot resounded in the room, making his ears ring. A hot, burning pain seared through his right shoulder and into his whole body, and Marcus collapsed onto the floor, howling in pain.
OoO
'No strategy ever survived contact with the enemy', the military leader Clausewitz had once correctly stated. However, normally, Marcus' plans needed only minor readjustments, as he would cover most eventualities beforehand.
Staring into the wrong end of a 9 millimeter, he realised that he may have been a little bit sloppy this time; being held at gunpoint by his target usually wasn't an option. And in this moment, he felt fear shooting through him, together with pain. Blood was pooling out of the wound at his shoulder, dampening his black shirt.
Agent Bell was standing over him, taking deep breaths as she aimed at the point between his eyes. She didn't look triumphant; she looked nearly just as scared as he was as she growled: "How long have you been watching me?! For how long? A day? A week?"
Marcus pressed his lips together, knowing that he had to buy himself some time to find a way to disarm her. Never would a Marine give up, not until he was dead, and even then, he would still continue fighting. Therefore, after hesitating for a moment, he answered through gritted teeth: "Six days."
A nearly mocking laugh came from the special agent; she wiped a bit of tangled hair out of her face before gripping her Glock again with both hands.
"Six days? I would have thought that your employers would send someone who is prepared better. Maybe I didn't notice you, but you can't know much about me, otherwise you would have done this differently!"
Marcus wanted to shrug, putting on a cool and playful grin, but his shoulder was burning, and so he simply replied: "I have to admit that I'm impressed. Your close combat skills are better than I would have thought."
"Like some species of frog, I grow what I need," she said with a smug expression, and Marcus couldn't help but grin – she wasn't the FBI barbie he'd thought she was. She was tough, stronger than she looked and had nerves of steel. They looked each other in the eyes for a long moment, and Marcus forgot that he was there to kill her for a brief second.
As he was aware of the gun pointed at his head again, he eyed the Glock and questioned: "So... why didn't you shoot me yet? You got the perfect opportunity."
A grin flashed over her face, and even with the blood running down her temple and encrusting in her hair, she looked beautiful. Not even her next remark could tarnish the sight, and Marcus found himself slapping himself internally for slipping out of his professional behaviour again and again.
"If I'd wanted to kill you, the first shot would have gone through your skull."
"Good to know," Marcus nodded, his gaze wandering from the Glock around the slightly damaged living room and then to her eyes, that were still fixed on him. "So... what are you going to do now?"
She seemed slightly taken aback by his question, as if she'd simply been happy to have him under control until now. The Marine inside Marcus told him to negotiate, or even attack, despite risking to be shot by her. However, before he could decide, she answered: "You'll stand up slowly and we'll go into the kitchen to grab the first aid kit. Then I will take care of your wounds and you'll tell me who sent you."
"Aren't you going to call your colleagues?" Marcus breathed, unable to conceal his surprise and shock as he slowly and carefully stood up, screwing his face as the pain in his shoulder intensified. Special Agent Bell shook her head, still aiming at him, but now only at his chest as they walked over into the kitchen.
"No. One of them is a traitor who paid you to kill me because I found inconsistencies in the files I was working on. When I hand you over, my only way of finding out who that bastard is is gone," she explained, opening a cupboard with one hand and pulling out a red med kit while Marcus fell onto one of the chairs, groaning loudly.
"You're surprising me again and again," Marcus laughed mirthlessly as she grabbed the knife block and made sure it was out of reach and on his weak side. He found it smart of her not to trust him; he would have done the same. While she opened the kit with one hand, he thought about his options. There was no way he would get out of here without being shot again, and he was sure that she would detect it if he tried to betray her. So his only option was to help her, and there was no way he could deny that he was glad about it.
"Your compliments won't help. You're still a bastard," she hissed, but her expression was relatively soft as she stuck her weapon into her belt and ripped his shirt open, not caring about the flying buttons. As she pushed it off Marcus' injured shoulder, he screamed, and she looked at him with a pained expression, muttering: "Sorry. Sorry, it'll be over in a second!"
"Never say you're sorry," Marcus grunted and looked away as she started to clean the gunshot wound with some gauze. "By the way... now that I'm helping you and am missing out on thirty thousand bucks, we should probably introduce ourselves properly, huh? I'm Marcus."
A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth and it made him forget about the agonizing pain that was still torturing him.
"I'm worth thirty thousand? I feel honoured. You can call me Katie. So, Marcus, how many years have you been with the Marines?"
She'd asked it pretty casually, but still he looked at her with a mixture of surprise and panic, registering how her gaze wandered over his bare, muscular chest from time to time before returning to his wound.
"How did you know that?"
"The way you fought, and the fact that I didn't hear you coming into the house. Also, the haircut," Katie smiled and Marcus relaxed, daring to have a look at his wound now.
"How does it look?"
"Worse than it is. The bullet went through, it should heal without bigger medical attention," Katie assured him and Marcus sighed in relief – that meant that he wouldn't have to go to a hospital, something that would have been a lot of trouble. Gunshot wounds always required the police to be called, and though he had a false ID and everything, no cover was perfect.
After disinfection, Katie wrapped a bandage around his shoulder and knelt down to take care of the cuts she'd inflicted on him. Marcus originally wanted to talk to her about something, anything to distract himself from the feeling of her soft fingertips running over his torso, briefly tracing his abdominal muscles. However, his tongue seemed to be glued to the roof of his mouth and his ability to speak was gone. Even as she started to treat the superficial cuts at his hip, just above his jeans, he couldn't keep some very specific, adult thoughts out of his head.
In this moment he realised that this had never been just a job. Since seeing her photo at the airport, or at least after seeing her smile for the first time, he hadn't behaved like a professional anymore. There'd always been something else lingering in the back of his heart, feelings that he had tried to keep out of his head.
But now, they came back with full force, keeping him from thinking straight and before he could prevent it, he'd already lifted his good arm. Slowly, to show her that he didn't mean any harm, he reached out and touched her cheek before shoving a bit of hair out of her face. He could see the laceration on her temple better now and he bit his lip, feeling a little bit guilty.
As a child, he'd been taught not to hurt women, that a good man never raised his hand against a woman, and even though he knew that she was an equal opponent, he still felt like he'd done something wrong.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice nearly breaking and she looked at him with her beautiful chestnut eyes, her expression warm. She cocked her head to the side, a little bit of wonder gleaming in her eyes as she touched the back of his hand.
"Never say you're sorry," she murmured back and Marcus was glad that she winked at him, breaking the tension that had made him want to shift around on the chair. "I have to admit that you surprise me now."
Katie handed him some gauze and held her hair back so he could take care of her wound. Sucking the air in sharply as he touched the cut, she murmured: "I guess my whole body will be blue and green tomorrow. We should spar sometime, I'm sure you are a good training partner."
"I would like to," Marcus answered with a small smile and clumsily attached a plaster over the wound. "But first we need to find the man who hired me to get you out of the way. Maybe you'll write me a card if you become Director of the FBI."
Katie laughed lightly and stood up, producing a sling for his arm out of a big cloth while stating: "I guess it's more likely that we need to go on the run together. I suspect it's someone way above me in ranks. I hope you'll have a spare toothbrush for me."
"That shouldn't be a problem," Marcus chuckled, amused, and watched how Katie grabbed a bottle of whisky from a cupboard, murmuring something about numbing the pain in her ribs.
Never would he have thought that this assignment would end like this, but he couldn't deny that he liked it, and he was curious where this would lead to. In any way, it promised to be exciting.